


rain-slick

by fleuresty



Series: three-word twitter challenges [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, First Kiss, M/M, Meet-Cute, background benverly, background mikestanpat, im sorry it’s not more relevant! but bee got me on this train and i Will Not disembark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleuresty/pseuds/fleuresty
Summary: Eddie does not want to be at this party. He does not want to be in the rain. But just as he begins to resemble a drowned rat, a haven appears in the form of a bus stop.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: three-word twitter challenges [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1844854
Comments: 7
Kudos: 74





	rain-slick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaspbee (fillory)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fillory/gifts).



> From a request for prompts I put out on my Twitter!!! Thanks for the kickstart, Bee!!!
> 
> Yeah, this may or may not be exactly how I twisted my ankle last night. It was not this cute.
> 
> No warnings but for language!

So. Eddie does not want to be at this party. He’s been at this party a million times before, or at least that’s how it feels, and if he has to make it through the whole thing one more time he’s gonna go batshit on these poor bystanders eating their tiny, fancy little ham-and-goat-cheese quiches.

The thing is that it’s business. His boss had amiably requested that Eddie go in his place, which was basically his way of saying that if someone from the firm wasn’t at the party, some deal was going to go sour, and it certainly wasn’t going to be The Boss Man and it certainly wasn’t going to be some other idiot. Thus, it fell squarely onto Eddie’s shoulders in their well-cut suit jacket, and since he hasn’t spoken to Jackson from Kilcollin & Henry, he can’t leave yet.

It takes another hour and forty-eight minutes to get through with Jackson. He’s a blustering sort of hotshot young man that puts up Eddie’s hackles, and it becomes immediately clear to him only moments after introducing himself that the reason his boss wants Eddie to speak to him is to get him to jump ship to their company. It’s impossibly aggravating, but it’s done now and Eddie can finally scoop up a couple more of those tiny quiches and escape into the night.

…The thing is that it’s raining. Eddie doesn’t remember seeing rain in the forecast, but it’s a torrential downpour outside, and it’s a fucking _New York City_ downpour, the kind that always makes it into the movies even though you’ve never seen one happen in real life. At least, Eddie hasn’t. And it seems ridiculous to come to a party with an umbrella, anyway, so he hadn’t.

Shit. This is a really good suit. It’ll clean, probably, but he already knows he’s going to have to Pay, capital P, for it. A cab or an Uber or a Lyft or a fucking - newspaper held over his head until he gets to a subway station seems like a safer bet, but fuck it, Eddie just got a raise. He’ll pay for the damn dry-cleaning.

(He’s aware that this is weird for him, a departure from his usually fastidious nature, deliberately walking out into the _rain_ where it’s _cold_ and his suit will be _drenched_ and he could make himself _sick_ \- but that last part’s his mother’s voice and he’s working on denying her. He’s almost thirty-two and he still lives in a two-bedroom apartment with three roommates (a _really nice one_ , though,), so he can deny his mother’s voice when she says that going out in the rain will make him sick. So he does it, makes his excuses and fares his wells and stares blankly at the elevator button when it lights up “G” for ground and takes him down to that very floor.)

The box dings when it gets there, and Eddie blinks himself out of the stupor he’s been left in. Outside the heavy glass doors on the front of the building, the rain still pummels the sidewalks. Eddie’s fairly certain he hears thunder, though it’s distant, and he’s rewarded for his suspicion only a few moments later when he steps onto the sidewalk just as the sky lights up and another crash rumbles through the city.

Eddie blinks up at the clouds from under the worn awning, thinks about the hastily-considered trench coat he’d found hanging on the coat hook by the door (placed there courtesy of Patty). He’s not really sure how it got there (he blames Stan), but he’s wishing now that he’d grabbed it on that split-second impulse, now. He squares his shoulders inside his one well-cut suit, and trudges out into it.

He makes it a few blocks before he starts itching, rain drying on the back of his neck, inside his shirt collar, even as more comes down on his head. There’s a bus stop around the corner, though, he knows, with a covered bench where he can at least take stock of how much walk he has left in him versus the distance to either his apartment or a public transit station that can get him there. It’s not _that_ late; Eddie can probably still get there without having to worry about falling asleep on the train and missing his stop.

The bus pulls away from the stop before he can consider getting on it, not that that one would have helped him much anyway, but what makes Eddie pause is that someone is already lingering on the bench he’s angling for, clearly not having just gotten off or considered getting on the bus that just left. That’s odd thing number one; the other is that this person has a suitcase sitting next to his feet, the kind that you move across the country with, even though that’s a city bus that just left and they’re nowhere near an airport.

Eddie’s options are to go and stand next to this mild oddity of a person or to keep moving and getting rained on until he either hits another bus stop or breaks down, orders an Uber, and hopes the driver lets him in even though he looks like a drowned rat and feels twice as gross.

And, well. The bus stop guy doesn’t look that dangerous. (The voice belonging to his mother squawks and Eddie ignores her.)

He makes a show of shaking out his jacket and hair when he gets under the bench shelter, far enough from the stranger that he doesn’t get rainwater all over him but close enough that there’s no way he doesn’t know Eddie is there. He opens his eyes, rocks his head away from the plastic of the shelter, and blinks at Eddie from behind thick-rimmed glasses that he doesn’t seem to have noticed are still splattered with raindrops.

“Evening,” the guy offers, even though Eddie isn’t looking right at him and is only barely facing him. “You know you’re really, really not dressed for the weather?”

Eddie shoots him a look. “You’re one to talk, buddy,” he says, nodding at the leather jacket, canvas sneakers, and distinct lack of other coat or umbrella amongst his meager luggage.

That earns Eddie a big, crooked smile. “You’ve got me there,” he drawls, shooting a single finger gun at Eddie. “But at least I’m not out walking in it.”

Eddie gives him one more affronted look for good measure and turns away, pulling out his phone to fake some kind of work email so Leather Jacket will stop talking to him.

No dice. “Richie, by the way.” Eddie blinks up, sees the guy scooting down the bench and sticking out a hand. “I’m just waiting for the rain to let up before I get on my way.”

Eddie stares at the hand like a fox eyeing up the contents of a live trap. “That’s not very New York of you, Richie,” he comments mildly.

“Yeah, well, I’m not very New York,” Richie shoots back. “Just got in on a Greyhound from Augusta.”

That has Eddie’s eyes shooting up toward his hairline. “Georgia? That explains the attitude, I guess, but you don’t sound very Southern.”

Richie laughs at that, warm and not unpleasant except for the way Eddie feels a little targeted by it. “Maine, dude,” he corrects Eddie gently. “The ride from Augusta, Jaw-juh,” he drawls it out for just second, “is like over a day long, and I’d be looking a lot more like a zombie if I’d been on a bus that long. Your confidence in me is much appreciated, random-stranger-who-still-hasn’t-finished-off-the-introductions.” His voice is cajoling, eyes mischievous behind his glasses.

He finally relents; “Eddie,” he tells Richie. “I just came from a big corporate party, hence the suit, and didn’t have a coat.”

“Ouch,” Richie says, mock-wincing in sympathy. He slides down the bench a little, making room for Eddie to sit without pressing their arms together shoulder to elbow. “That’s rough, you deserve some bench for that one.”

Eddie sits as gracefully as he can, getting colder and itchier by the minute in his drying shirt. “Thanks.”

They sit in silence for a minute, and then Richie is off telling Eddie some bullshit about the whirlwind that brought him south from some tiny little town in Maine that Eddie has never heard of, like most of the tiny little towns in Maine. Most of it sounds fake, or at least heavily embellished, full of characters that say and do things that cannot help but feel larger than life.

It’s a long time that they sit and talk. Against all odds, Eddie kind of likes it, the companionable chatter of a couple of strangers who are probably never going to talk again after whatever happens on this bench. Eddie finds himself spilling all kinds of little details about his life that he doesn’t have to talk about to his friends.

In return, Richie tells him about his attempt to break into either comedy or radio after hosting an AM radio show at home from midnight to 3am, four nights a week for nigh on 10 years.

“So what are you doing in New York, then?” Eddie cuts across him suddenly. “Seems like you could have gone anywhere,” he amends.

Richie laughs at that. “I’m just visiting a friend,” he explains. “I’m gonna stay a couple nights and then blow through town, like I was never here at all.”

“The mysterious traveler,” Eddie teases.

Finally the rain has stopped; Eddie leans forward and tips his head up to the sky to watch the drops fall sparse. “I’m gonna make a break for it before it comes back twice as bad,” he says, standing and shaking out the jacket he’d shed in the middle of Richie’s stories. It’s clammy when he pulls it back on, half-dry, but it’s better than nothing.

Before he goes, though, he takes one last look back at Richie, still smiling at him from the bus bench. “It was nice talking to you, Richie,” he says seriously. “If you’re ever back in New York after this maybe we’ll cross paths again.”

“Or,” Richie blurts out hopefully, “you could tell me your last name and your phone number? We could make a point of it.”

Eddie clams up at that a little bit; it seems incredibly reckless to make maybe-plans with a maybe-stranger on a bus bench at 11 at night when said stranger is only going to be in his city for two days, and Eddie is nothing if not careful. “Tell you what,” he says, carefully, gently, “you bump into me again while you’re in town and then we’ll talk.”

Richie’s eyes are huge behind his glasses, caught extra blue in the yellow of the streetlights. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

One last smile at him, and Eddie walks away, waiting until he’s out of sight to bend his head over his phone and call an Uber.

His Uber driver drops him a full block away from his apartment because he gets a bigger fare in, and Eddie knocks his otherwise good rating down by a star for leaving him to run in the redoubled rain up the street to his apartment building. When his foot slips as he hits the slick stoop and he lands flat on his back, groaning, he thinks he should have taken off two. 

Eddie takes a second to just lie there, recovering just breath and his bearings (and his dignity, though at least the driver had pulled away) - and then a fucking pit forms in his stomach at the sound of a voice saying “Fancy seeing you here.”

Richie’s face pops upside-down into his field of view, grinning. Through his mortification, Eddie kind of wants to run a thumb under his squinty left eye. “Jesus,” he grits out. “Tell me you didn’t fucking see that.”

“Oh, I saw it.” He looks gleeful, but moves around toward Eddie’s feet to help set him back on them.

“Thanks,” Eddie mutters. “Guess you’ve more than earned my number now.” He tries to joke, brush off the incident that just made him want to set himself on fire, and is rewarded when Richie brightens, either takes the bait or intentionally agrees to put Eddie out of his misery.

“Let’s get inside,” he suggests. “If I’d realized you were going to the same place I wouldn’t have taken the fucking Uber.”

Richie winks at him. “Might have saved you some pain, but then where would I have used my dashing good looks and chivalrous charm?”

Eddie lets that one go. “Your friends live here too?”

“Bev and Ben,” Richie confirms. “Don’t know if you know them.”

Because he hasn’t made a fool enough of himself yet, Eddie’s jaw drops. “You’re kidding. My roommates Mike, Stan, and Patty introduced me to them. We do fucking game nights every month.”

“You’re _that_ Eddie?” Richie’s mouth falls open as well. “Jesus. I don’t know if this is what you want to hear right now, man, but I’ve had a crush on you by reputation alone for like. Three months.” His teeth click as he snaps his mouth closed and slaps a hand over it. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”

“Oh, fuck my phone number.” Eddie throws his caution to the wind and drags Richie in by his collar for a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Get coffee with me in the morning?”

Richie looks like someone has hit him over the head with something, like he’s upside-down again for real this time. “Yeah.” Even his voice is dazed. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I try to make them go slow and they end up smooching after like an hour. Fellas, I swear.
> 
> Bee, on god I’m gonna write you some full blown mikestanpat one of these days.
> 
> I’m on Twitter @fortheworlds!


End file.
